OCEAN CITY — With still no formal opinion from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on the legality of women going topless in the same area as men are allowed to go shirtless, the Ocean City Beach Patrol (OCBP) this week issued a directive to turn a blind eye, so to speak, on the issue.

Last August, at the request of Maryland resident Chelsea Covington, Worcester County State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby reached out to the Maryland Attorney General’s Office (MAGO) seeking an opinion on the legality of women going topless in the same areas where men are allowed to go shirtless under the Equal Protection Act. It’s an opinion that could have serious repercussions in the resort area. Covington, an advocate for female bare-chestedness in public through the TopFreedom initiative, often goes topless in public places in Maryland, including Ocean City and Assateague.

Roughly 10 months later, the MAGO has not handed down a formal opinion on the issue, nor ostensibly any directives for law enforcement agencies on how to handle the issue in the interim. Absent a clear-cut directive from the Attorney General’s Office, the Ocean City Beach Patrol (OCBP) and the Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) are handling the female topless issue with kid gloves, careful to respect the rights of all involved including those females who choose to go topless and the countless visitors and residents who might be offended.

Just last weekend, three women were reportedly casually sunbathing topless on the beach at 11th Street. On Tuesday, OCBP Captain Butch Arbin said the beach patrol had not received any formal opinion from the MAGO, but was working under the assumption Maryland’s laws on the issue were rather nebulous and difficult to enforce.

“The bottom line is that according to the attorney general, there is no enforceable law on the books that prohibits topless females,” he said. “Personally, I don’t think it is good for Ocean City or the families that wish to visit an All-American city, but we only enforce the laws and ordinances. Therefore, our staff has been give specific direction on this issue.”

That specific directive was carefully spelled out in a policy statement issued by Arbin to his OCBP staff on Tuesday. Essentially, the policy statement, dated retroactively to May 20, states the Beach Patrol will carefully document complaints of female bare-chestedness on the beach, but will not approach women who exercise their apparent rights to go topless.

“Until we get specific guidance from the State’s Attorney, the City Solicitor and the Mayor and Council, we will handle complaints about women going topless on our beaches in the following manner,” the policy statement reads. “We will document the complaint on a minor incident form with information and particulars about the situation and the complainant’s information. We will not approach the topless woman, even if requested to do so by the complainant or other beach patrons.”

Last week, news came out that topfreedom was allowed, or more precisely, not outlawed, for women at Ocean City beach in Maryland. This was after three women were recently seen sunbathing topfree, and word got out that the Ocean City Beach Patrol had issued a memo telling their staff not to bother topfree women.

This, however, was not done in the name of gender equality. It was based on the absence of any law against it. There are currently no state laws against women’s topfreedom in Maryland.

People thought this was great news. Meanwhile Ocean City was trying to quickly backtrack their new reputation as having a topfree beach. On June 9, a post appeared on the .gov website declaring, “Ocean City Is Not A Topless Beach & Will Not Become A Topless Beach.” It clarified that the Mayor and City Council were firmly against women’s topfreedom.

On June 10, just 3 days after the first story came out, Ocean City unanimously passed an emergency law against women being topless anywhere within the city. Violating the ordinance is a “municipal infraction” subject to a fine of up to $1,000. (Hefty punishment for having female breasts!)

After one buttoned-up year, Playboy is bringing nude photographs back to its magazine.

Cooper Hefner, the son of magazine founder Hugh Hefner, announced the move on Twitter Monday saying, "I'll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake."

Playboy published its first non-nude issue in March 2016 and prior to that had launched a safe-for-work Playboy Now app. But its latest, the March/April 2017 issue, available on Playboy.com and on newstands Feb. 28., brings back nudity.

The new issue will include pictorials with March Playmate Elizabeth Elam, who graces the cover, and April Playmate, Nina Daniele. Also in the magazine: a Playboy Interview with Scarlett Johansson, a profile of CNN political commentator Van Jones and an article on hip-hop duo Run the Jewels

Before becoming the magazine's chief creative officer last year, Hefner ran his own media company HOB (Hefner Operations & Productions), which became part of Playboy Enterprises. He told L.A. Weekly in July 2016 that ending nude photography "was a bad idea, the whole thing."

Also returning: the Party Jokes section and The Playboy Philosophy, a political and cultural column written by Hefner, nearly 40 years after his father last wrote it for the magazine.

Among the changes: a Heritage section that looks at the magazine's past and the removal of “Entertainment for Men” from the cover. “Playboy will always be a lifestyle brand focused on men’s interests," Hefner said in a statement, "but as gender roles continue to evolve in society, so will we.”

[...] There must be some math equation that correlates the number of park benches in a given city to the number of vacation days given by the average employer in said society. [For the Russians reading this: in America, there are very few benches at all anywhere, and no one uses any vacation days (hO: да!). We are inexplicably proud of this, too. This is because the people who founded America were Puritan assholes who thought that God would not let you into heaven unless you put in massive amounts of overtime for your boss. Thankfully, the idea of proudly renting your life away did not catch on in almost any other country on Earth (hi, Japan!)].

HAMBURG, N.Y. (WKBW) - Topless tanning. Though it’s been a concern of some at Woodlawn Beach, it is not illegal in New York State.

Some beach-goers say it shouldn’t be allowed because there are many children at the beach and they do not want their kids exposed to this.

"They're boobs. I understand that everyone has them, but be considerate to the people around you," said Lindsey Styn, a parent who was upset about the topless tanning.

On Saturday, Town of Hamburg Police removed topless tanners from the park who they say were being unruly. Though topless tanning isn't illegal, anyone being disorderly can be removed from a state park.

"There were men taking sexually explicit photos of the women and that crossed the line," said Ray Pawlowski who manages Woodlawn Beach. "The women were even going to the bar which is privately owned, and they had to be asked to leave because they didn't have their tops on."

"They were doing this around children," said Styn. "It was disgusting. I know everyone has their own beliefs, but there's a time and a place."

7 Eyewitness News did reach out to the topless tanner and were able to speak with her after this report aired. She said it's not the first time she's bared her breasts in public and it won't be the last.

She posted a photo of her topless tanning on her Facebook page, and said she does it to, "exercise her rights for gender equality."

Only a third of Americans think it's unfair that women generally cannot go topless in places where men can[ by Peter Moore | 21 July 2015 | via YouGov ]

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The laws on toplessness can vary significantly across the country, though not as much as people might suppose. In New York state women are legally allowed to go topless anywhere that a man is also allowed to be topless, including the streets of New York City and the subway, something the police now generally respect. Many other states, including places as disparate as California and Alabama, also have similar laws on the books. In fact only three states (Utah, Indiana and Tennessee) explicitly prohibit female toplessness in public.

Research from YouGov shows that Americans tend to be OK with having different standards for men and women when it comes to toplessness. 47% of Americans think it's fair that men can generally go topless places women cannot, but 35% think it is unfair. There is a significant age divide on this question, however, as younger Americans are much more likely to think it is an unfair double standard than older Americans. 49% of under-30s think that it is unfair to hold women to a different standard than men, but 63% of over-65s think it is fair.

There is also a gender divide on this question. While most women (51%) think that it is fair that women's toplessness is generally not allowed when men's is, men are nearly evenly split, with 44% saying it is fairly while 42% think it is unfair.

The offensiveness of seeing topless women with bare breasts varies greatly based on context. While 73% of Americans would not be that offended by seeing a woman breastfeeding in public, 60% say that they would be offended 'a lot' or 'somewhat' by seeing a topless women walking on the sidewalk. 58% say the same about the front page of a newspaper, on TV before 6pm (56%) and while sunbathing in a park (50%). Most Americans would not be that offended, however, by seeing a topless woman on the cover of a fashion magazine (51%) or on TV after 11pm (60%).

Full poll results can be found here and topline results and margin of error here.

Mike Huckabee is having trouble deciding when women should be topless. His solution? Men need to cover their manboobs.

The ultra-conservative Christian and 2016 presidential hopeful started off a January radio bulletin for his broadcast, The Huckabee Report, lamenting that after 44 years, British tabloid The Sun will do away with its “famous Page 3 girls,” which featured young, topless female models. Page 3 was killed in response to a “long campaign by feminists” who called them offensive and outdated, he said.

In the segment reported by Buzzfeed, Huckabee juxtaposed this with a campaign by women to allow them to “walk around shirtless, the way some men do.”

“Celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Miley Cyrus have joined in, and now they’re filling the internet with topless photos of themselves, all in the name of fighting sexism and inequality,” he intoned.

Last year the organization GoTopless held a parade in New York City with the message, “As long as men are allowed to be topless in public, women should have the same constitutional right. Or else, men should have to wear something to hide their chests.”

Comedian Chelsea Handler last year mocked the famous image of Vladimir Putin riding a horse shirtless with her own topless version, and singer Miley Cyrus did the same, in an effort to challenge Instagram’s censorship of women’s breasts, Gawker reported.

The distinction between women empowering themselves to go shirtless on their own terms as opposed to being objectified for male consumers by the likes of The Sun seemed totally lost on Huckabee.

“So are topless photos of women an offensive display of sexism, or an empowering blow against sexism,” he asked. “I have a feeling most men don’t care much either way.”

His solution? “Just tell the men to put on a darn shirt when they go out in public,” he says with a chuckle.

Huckabee recently came under fire for other bizarre remarks involving female nudity. In a speech at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, he derided legislation preventing discrimination against transgender people by saying, “Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today,'” the Des Moines Register reported.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A disgraced lawmaker who was jailed for a sex scandal involving a teenager has vacated his seat in the House of Delegates to run for the state Senate.

Joseph Morrissey formally announced his Senate bid Wednesday at a church in Richmond.

Morrissey has moved out of his Henrico County House district and into a Richmond-area Senate district currently represented by Democratic Sen. Rosalyn R. Dance. By doing so, Morrissey automatically vacated his House seat.

House leaders toyed with the idea of kicking Morrissey out of the House earlier this year but ultimately did not.

Morrissey is currently facing charges of fabricating a document that he presented as evidence in December, when he was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in a sex scandal involving a 17-year-old girl.

UPDATE: Laurent-Auger has been asked to return to Le Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, the school's human resources director wrote in a letter Tuesday, saying that the "whole issue could have been handled differently".

A Montreal teacher has been fired after her students uncovered a very racy part of her past.

Jacqueline Laurent-Auger, who up until recently taught theatre at the prestigious private school Le Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal, lost her job in July after some of her students dug up clips of erotic films she had starred in more than 40 years ago, the Globe and Mail reported.

Laurent-Auger, who is now 73, had parts in several erotic films in the 1960s and '70s, during what she said was a time of openness in the art world. The films weren't pornographic, she told the Globe.

“I did it as a young actress to make a little money. The idea of throwing someone out the door for something they did almost 50 years ago is idiotic. It makes me angry.”

The school confirmed to La Presse that she was let go because the students' discovery created a "tense atmosphere" in her classroom, and that she was no longer a good role model for the teens.

The fact that students can see a staff member naked with another adult is unacceptable, said the school's director, Michel April.

Le Journal de Montreal watched some of the films and said while Laurent-Auger was nude in several scenes, none of them were sexually explicit and they fit with French film culture at the time.

Several of the site's bloggers were critical of the school's decision, with one slamming it as a kind of "hypocritical puritanism".

"When you decide to hire a professional artist in this environment, one must understand that this type of scene is part of the acting experience," wrote blogger Tania Longpré.

According to a statement, however, the school fears the films might be a negative influence on students looking to break into theatre and the arts.

Laurent-Auger doesn't regret her past, but told CBC's As It Happens she's surprised it has any bearing on her current job.